How to: Trust In Work Relationships

Malti Bhojwaniis a certified life coach who offers her services atMulti Coaching International. When she's not teaching people how to improve work relationships, she's helping scores of corporates, educational institutes, and individuals better themselves using her unique coaching techniques. She's also launched a series of videos offering tips and advice; check them out here.

When you trust and you want to be trusted, it means that you are both sincere--which is what most of us think about when we think of trust--as well as dependable, competent and committed. If I promise to finish a task for you, all these factors will come into play. I may be a nice and honest person, but I also may be lacking the competence to finish the task. Read on to understand my methods of inducing trust at the workplace.

Just Trust

People often behave exactly how we expect them to behave with us. If we trust, they are trustworthy. If we doubt, they will let us down because that is all we expect from them. Watch this one with your kids and employees! If you expect them to do well in an exam, or get the job done well, they often will. Likewise, they'll fail miserably, if that's what you believe.

The Body of Trust

Mean what you say and say what you mean. Remember that the words we utter only make up five percent of communication, the rest of it is: our tone, body language and facial expressions. Even if people are not able to articulate it, they will know when you are not being congruent.

Excerpt from The Leadership Dojo, by Richard Strozzi-Heckler:

"Consider the skill of creating trust, the way that one organizes oneself bodily will produce assessments from others that will open and close possibilities. The way we shape ourselves will have people move toward us, away from us, against us, or be indifferent to us.

Inside our own thinking we may be sincere, acknowledging it as valuable for our work. But if our breath is high and rapid in our chest, if we’re squeezing our eyes, and if there’s a frozen smile on our faces, we will ourselves have difficulty trusting, and it will be difficult for others to trust us. There is a very real difference between talking about trust and actually being trustworthy."

In my upcoming book, I talk about “being” throughout the book. It is all in the being. If you want trust, you have to be trusting; if you want dependability, you have to be dependable; and most importantly, if you want honesty, you have to be honest.

Ask and Be Ready to Hear and Say “No” Without Guilt

Only someone who can say “No” can make a real promise.

Don’t expect your colleagues to read your mind. If you want them to do something, ask them specifically for what you want. Remember that you are two people brought up in different homes, different schools and colleges; perhaps even from different parts of the world and of different age brackets, with different habits. So, to assume that the other should know what you want is completely ridiculous. Never assume that anything is common knowledge.

When you are uncomfortable or simply don't want to do something, be firm and say “No.” Allow people to say “No” without repercussions too. Even if you are disappointed, accept that you are better off being slightly disappointed than having empty “Yeses” thrown at you out of fear or obligation.

If an employee could not take on a new project due to time constraints, or if it is you who can’t, be firm and say “No.” But don't hesitate to negotiate if you can. A distorted internal link most of us have is to connect the “No” to a request to meaning a “No” to yourself. We take the rejection personally, which is completely misplaced.

Be Your Word and Keep Your Promises

This is the most important point with trust. Notice the number of promises you are making in a day. When you say, “I will” do something, it is a promise. The person you are making a promise to has now a new reality based on what you have said to them.

Beware of what you say and notice when you are saying “Yes,” but you mean “Maybe” or if you’re saying “I will try,” when you mean “I have no intentions at all.” Be mindful of what you say in order to have more promises fulfilled. People will learn that you are your word. That is a very powerful position to be in when people trust you implicitly.

Conclusion

Take away the need to be reminded or nagged. Can't you see how powerful this can be, for a colleague or client to know that something is going to be done just because you said so? If you can build this through repeated small actions, then when big reassurances or promises are uttered, both parties will have faith that it will happen.

Trust does not just mean to tell the truth, but rather it means to expect and give the other a sense of dependability. “You can count on me,” “I mean what I say,” and “I say so; so it is!”

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Good news for our readers, as Malti Bhojwani is coming out with a new book on June 29, 2012. Entitled Don't Think of a Blue Ball, this self-help guide is published by Om Books International, and contains invaluable techniques and pointers charted out by this renowned life coach.